The Healdsburg Unified School District is looking for ways to save money next year in response to the economic downturn from the COVID-19 pandemic. The district is proposing certain cuts such as leaving several vacant positions unoccupied, as well as reducing professional development, cutting the freshman seminar class for the year and a 20% reduction to individual school site budgets, among others. The suggested cuts include the layoff of only one employee, a special education bus driver.
The district is considering leaving 6.0 vacant positions empty for the upcoming school year. These positions include the Healdsburg Junior High School dean, a Healdsburg High School Supporting English Learners advisor, a reclassified fluent English proficient mentor at the junior high, a kindergarten paraprofessional and a custodian.
Programs that possibly could be eliminated for the time being include the freshmen seminar and CIS, the high school’s independent studies program. The proposed reductions would save $589,000.
During public comment, Healdsburg Area Teachers’ Association President, Ever Flores, said a lot of students with social and emotional difficulties have taken advantage of the independent studies program and wants the district to think about how they can serve students in special circumstances if the CIS program ends up getting cut.
The proposal for removing the freshman seminar course for the year would have to be presented and decided on by the Healdsburg Unified School District Board of Trustees. They’d also have to consider if they’d want to offer a waiver for the requirement for the freshman class.
During a special school board meeting on June 8 Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel said they’re also suggesting cuts to professional development conferences and seminars for teachers.
“We are saving $140,000 there,” Vanden Heuvel said, referring to the cost of professional development. “We want to maintain our conference budget for things that are absolutely necessary. Sometimes we have a new AP (advanced placement) teacher who needs to get trained at the AP conference for instance.”
School Board Trustee Mike Potmesil said it will be interesting to see what professional development can be done if the federal government kicks in some money.
He said that professional development is close to his heart and that, “It is what we need to do with all of our teachers, our administrators and our classified staff.”
Vanden Heuvel said the district will still have $20,000 to $25,000 left for conferences, however, they won’t be able to send teachers and staff to them as frequently, although virtual conferences are likely occurring in-lieu of in-person events due to COVID-19.
If approved by the board, a 20% reduction to individual school budgets would save $63,300 according to the district.
“We actually looked at it today and none of them even spent 80% of their site budget this year
given COVID closed there would have been some more spending potentially, but we believe this won’t be super harmful and if they really need anything we can make exceptions depending on what it is,” Vanden Heuvel said.
Trustee Donna del Rey asked if these are the budgets that the school site councils are responsible for and Vanden Heuvel said, “We allot a portion of the money to the sites, some things like classroom materials are bought out of it … and then a percentage goes to the site council’s so the site council’s will have less.”
Del Rey also voiced concern whether families would have to donate things like paper to their classrooms if budgets were reduced. Vanden Heuvel said “No,” that it won’t be like that.
Keeping the empty kindergarten paraprofessional role vacant would save an additional $12,000 and allowing the new administrative assistant to work only 80% of the time would save $16,000.
“We have a new admin assistant at the office who actually only wants to work 80% of the time and so we are going to be able to accommodate that request and that helps us save a little bit of money,” Vanden Heuvel said.
“We have a special ed driver that drives a special ed student to a non-public school setting and the student is no longer in the district so we no longer need the driver,” Vanden Heuvel said, referring to the district’s one layoff. “This is one we would have been laying off anyways.”
It was noted that there was one layoff of an elementary teacher back in March.
According to Vanden Heuvel, the teacher was given preliminary notice in March and was officially laid off in May due to a drop in kindergarten enrollment.
The district will also likely find cost savings in coaching since only a select few fall sports are likely to take place this fall due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“We are building in coaching stipends, but the honest truth is we don’t know what sports are going to happen and what aren’t, or if any are,” Vanden Heuvel said. “NCS (North Coast Section for high school sports) and CIF (California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports) are currently in a holding pattern until mid-July when they are going to reassess. There is talk of compressing the athletic seasons to do three seasons from January to June, so they’d all be basically halved in size,” creating a much shorter season.
“There is the possibility that we’d have sports like golf or tennis or cross country, which can happen because they are largely non-contact and no to likely to spread COVID-19 like say football or wrestling would,” he said
All of the proposed changes would result in a total savings of $901,900. Vanden Heuvel said that the figure is a conservative estimate of what needs to be reduced, as the state budget has not yet been approved.
Vanden Heuvel did warn that there will be additional costs for things like cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) if students do come back to school for in-person learning.
“We are definitely going to have an uptick in cleaning supplies and PPE and other materials and we don’t know the costs yet, and so I would be hesitant to do any sort of discussion until we know what our fixed costs are going to be around COVID-19 and reopening,” Vanden Heuvel said.
The board of trustees will vote on the reductions as part of the initial budget process at their next meeting on June 29.
